Online portal, Searchlight Magazine Arts, goes live

Anti-fascist, anti-racist publication, Searchlight Magazine, which recently celebrated its 50th birthday, has just launched a new online arts and culture section, Searchlight Magazine Arts. Through comedy songs, industry interviews, editorial articles, new fiction and two spoof serials, the site aims to tackle how the arts can benefit wider society.

Searchlight Magazine Arts features a 30-minute documentary on the Birmingham arts scene, which looks at how the arts can bring development and purpose to disenfranchised communities. It includes an article on how the arts can benefit people with mental health issues – something which will also be picked up and revisited as a wider theme. And it boasts interviews with folk singer Harvey Andrews, and playwright David Edgar: who originally wrote a satirical column for Searchlight back in the 1970s.

The newly launched website also presents two fictional monthly web serials, both of which include silly poetry and songs. The first of these, Greg Goode’s Diaries, was originally launched on Searchlight and follows one Mississippi billionaire’s quest for political meaning. Now on episode IX, the series will play out on this new platform. The second serial, The Party That Never Won, covers the antics of a spoof, anti-immigration, anti-Europe party in the run up to the May election. Each episode features a new parody Bond theme tune, performed by the onsite soprano, and protest singer, Stella.

Gerry Gable, editor and publisher of Searchlight Magazine says: “We’ve always had an affiliation with the arts and are very aware of the benefits of humour in the work we do. We hope this site will bring a new, younger readership on board, who identify with our core message, but are looking for a lighter style of information.”

Kathryn Cave and Nick Madden, the editors who created, devised and launched the website, continue: “We have been writing comedy for Searchlight for some time now and are excited at the prospect of taking this a step further. We are passionate about the social good the arts can do and hope to bring a new readership to this legendary publication.”

The editors plan to run regular interviews with a wide range of professionals, articles which highlight the wider benefits of the arts, along with ongoing comic songs and fiction: www.searchlightmagazinearts.com

About Searchlight Magazine Arts

Searchlight Magazine Arts is the new culture section of Searchlight Magazine; a publication which has been fighting fascism for 50 years.  This features articles and interviews with a wide range of artists from around the UK and further afield. It also offers comedy, new fiction and a variety of multimedia, and constantly strives to promote grassroots artists through partnerships and shared projects. But above all, it aims to tell the stories nobody else is telling: www.searchlightmagazinearts.com